The Worst Picnic EVER

One Friday night in early July we decided to ditch the usual pizza and a movie and instead head for the mountains (our favorite spot) for a pizza picnic.  We've done this plenty of times: first, in our reflector oven days, and eventually transitioning to cooking the pie on our little grill. (Sorry none of those links have any pictures that are currently working - I'll get on that fix someday.)  It's always been an adventure and it's always been delicious.  But this time was definitely the worst.  (Especially if you ask Callie about it.)

It doesn't look like it would be horrible to have a picnic along the dirt roads near Monte Cristo.  I mean, check it out:

Lovely, right?  But, what is not pictured is the two or three (I forget) long, winding dirt roads that we traveled on before we found our "perfect picnic spot" (which actually were not a problem for anyone except hungry, ornery Callie in the back seat; the rest of us were quite enjoying the ride and the wildflowers and the views).   On top of that though, and also not pictured, is the vast quantities of flies (that bite!) (and mosquitoes, too) that were swarming us constantly.  Relentless bugs that didn't care about no stinkin' bug spray . . . or smoke . . . or swatting.  All they wanted was to eat our flesh.

Callie's face says it all.

So we did what anyone who cared to save their skin would do: we jumped in the car.  Where, as the final straw on the camel's back, we ate our blackened, burned (it went from just about done to black-bottomed in a matter of seconds), bad, bad pizza (also not really pictured, though slightly in the photo below).  Callie made sure we knew it was the worst picnic ever (rather a la the Berenstain Bears), but hey, it's memories.  And even she laughs about it now.

And she and Sam got to eat in the back of the car, so that
was an adventure in and of itself.